Chaga

yellow Volvo we called The Pig, getting groceries, picking up from school, dropping off at daycare and trying to sleep, eat, read, vacuum and relax in between. Which I suppose is great for father-son bonding but not for a marriage. Certainly not a marriage. Four hours of overlap leaves a lot of leeway for infidelity. I’m getting mean again. And bitter.’

‘She cheated on you?’ A hail of meteorites kindled away to nothing in the sky above the Mara plain. You could see forever in that sky, Gaby thought. Outwards and inwards. And backwards, on these nights that were so still and warm and close you could hear the continent breathing.

‘With her boss in the architecture firm. All the cliches. That’s what rankled most. It was all the cliches. You imagine that your life partner, your lover, the mother of your children, should be able to surprise you, even in that. Not her. All the cliches. She kept the kids. She couldn’t keep the man, though. I said I wouldn’t get mean and bitter, but this still gives great and deeply petty pleasure. All the time she was cheating on me with him, he was cheating on her with a woman he met in a leather club. All the time Carling was standing in front of the judge saying how this man had the lifestyle that would mean the best possible future for her children, he was swinging from Miss Rawhide’s ceiling by his balls. I laughed to bust a gut when I heard that.’

‘Do you miss the boys?’

‘I miss them like I would miss my right arm. When they aren’t here I feel like I’m only partially complete. They come out twice a year, stay for a week at Easter, longer in late summer.’

‘Is this a warning?’

‘I suppose it is. Not so much of when they’re here as when they go.’

‘You’re presuming a lot about this relationship.’

‘When you get to be a divorced fortysomething twelve thousand miles from your kids, you learn not to play at relationships. It’s a quantum affair. On or off. Everything or nothing. No games, Gaby.’

‘I don’t play games, Shepard.’

‘You do.’

‘Not with you.’

‘Games players can’t stop.’

‘Shall we end it here then?’ Gaby asked, temper flaring like a sudden consuming savannah fire.

‘That’s what I mean, Gaby. Games. What do you want?’

‘I want you, Shepard.’

‘I want you too. I want this red-haired, green-eyed Celtic fury with her incomprehensible and barbarous accent and her freckled skin that is like a little girl’s and her body that is like the wisest, most sinful whore in hell’s and her too-quick temper and her pride and her ambition and her recklessness and her childishness and her selfishness and her generosity and her bravery and her exuberance.’

‘You men talk the biggest load of oul’ shite.’

‘But it’s guaranteed fresh shite every day.’

The table was laid for dinner back at the camp. The rangers stood by. Gaby ducked into the tent and emerged with a bundle of fabric.

‘Present for you. Quid pro quo. Old football tradition; swapping shirts.’ Shepard unfolded the bundle, frowned a moment at the print of the masturbating nun on the front and her confession, now washed almost illegible. He smiled, stood up, unbuttoned his shirt and removed it. Before he could slip on the T-shirt Gaby placed a hand on his chest and drew him, as if it were magnetized, into the tent on the right.

They did not do the Serbian thing that night, but what they did do was so very good and so very long that they almost forgot about the things behind them in the cold past, and the long fingers with which they touched their lives.

27

It cost NASA more to buy off the satellite company whose launch window it appropriated than to charter the HORUS orbiter to lift the propulsion unit to Unity. The hope was to recoup it all and more when the Gaia probe went into orbit around the BDO and pictures started to come in. The news services had placed bids already. So the project directors told the financial managers. None of them had ever thought that First Contact would be mediated by accountants.

This was the mission plan. The manoeuvring unit would rendezvous with Gaia out in the marches of Jupiter, hard-dock and fire its engines to swing the probe on to a path that would take it into polar orbit around the Big Dumb Object. The disc’s spin would bring every part of its surface under the scrutiny of Gala’s sensors.

Eight hours before launch from Unity a fleet of unmanned USAF single-stage-to-orbit freighters launched from Edwards Air Force Base, together with a specialist team in a military shuttle. Revisions had been made to the payload calculations. Extra reaction mass tanks were needed, of a new and more efficient design. None of the multi-national crew of Unity believed this as they watched the delta-vee of the USAF shuttle dock with the Interceptor in its assembly orbit, turn its black refractory belly to the stars and disgorge space workers in exo- skeletons and spider-walking Canada arms from its cargo bay. New and more efficient designs; with stars and bars on their sides, that required military specialists to fit?

The USAF shuttle de-orbited with seconds to spare. Safe distancing thrusters burned blue. The Gaia interceptor moved into launch orbit. At fifty kilometres the main engine lit. The hydrogen flame vanished into the big night. As the interceptor crossed the orbit of Mars it jettisoned the last- minute military fuel tanks and flipped into deceleration mode. This piece of information, alone of all others relating to the flight of the interceptor, passed through a little-known NASA hierarchy directly on to the desk of the President of the United States.

28

Miriam Sondhai told Gaby McAslan that she had a visitor when she returned, elemental and glowing, to the old missionary house. She was most surprised to find T.P. Costello sitting on the creaking leather sofa, drinking Miriam Sondhai’s chai. She had been crazily expecting it to be her sister Reb, come out to Kenya on the same whim that carried her through the rest of her life, to see what Gaby had done with the star tapestry.

Gaby’s ready bag was on the coffee table.

‘Well, now you’ve finished banging the balls off UNECTA’s shiny new peripatetic Executive Director, maybe SkyNet’s new East Africa Correspondent wouldn’t mind earning her grossly inflated salary,’ T.P. said.

‘You’ve been through my things,’ Gaby growled. The bag was badly packed with impractical underwear and few cosmetics. ‘You’ve been fondling my panties, T.P. Costello. Probably sniffing them.’

‘Needs must. I’ve got a job for you.’

‘Send Jake. He’s senior East African Correspondent.’

‘Jake’s sick.’

‘You don’t get sick in this job.’

‘He’s sick,’ T.P. answered. His face was as fixed and unreadable as a Kabuki mask. ‘You have ten minutes to get that football gear off, stop yourself smelling like a trapper’s jockstrap and look like a professional newswoman. Ten minutes, then I’m dragging you as you are to Kenyatta. You’ve a flight to catch. Your passport’s in there too, don’t worry. And a tube of factor eight. You’re going to need it in the Maldives.’

‘The Maldives?’

‘Foa Mulaku’s bubbled up.’

‘You can tell a man packed this bag,’ Gaby said, rummaging in it for shower things. ‘No tampons.’